


Shell Shock

by aphelant



Category: Iron Man (2008), NCIS
Genre: Gen, Podfic Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-25
Updated: 2009-03-25
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:42:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphelant/pseuds/aphelant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Is that really necessary?' the suit asked. It had a freaky electronic voice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shell Shock

**Author's Note:**

> beta by general_jinjur
> 
> written for appellathon
> 
> podfic: [by aphelant](http://amplificathon.livejournal.com/268461.html), [by reena_jenkins](http://reena-jenkins.livejournal.com/35147.html)

Tony crouched behind a pile of crates and popped out his last clip. Empty. Shit. Bullets thunked into the wood overhead and Tony hunkered further down, not trusting the protection. It hadn't helped Gibbs, after all.

He really couldn't think about that right now.

"Tony!" McGee squawked in his ear, "We're pinned down!"

"We could use a little help right now!" Ziva added. "As soon as possible!"

Yeah, he'd love to, but - "Officer down. I repeat, officer down." He glanced over to where Gibbs lay, at the center of a pool of blood that was slowly spreading over the concrete. Tony was pretty sure he could see Gibbs' chest moving, but he really needed to get to him and assess his injuries. Which he couldn't do; not without ammo or adequate cover. Preferably both.

Over the earpiece, he could still hear Ziva and McGee alternating between demands for information and arguments over how best to proceed. Backup was still four minutes out, and they couldn't wait that long; they were all going to have to save themselves. But split up, with only a couple guns between them and an unknown number of assailants in unknown positions with unknown weapons -- well. Their options for survival didn't look that great.

And Tony wasn't going to leave Gibbs behind. Which didn't leave him with any options at all, really.

"Can you two get out the way you came in?"

He mostly tuned out the arguments that followed, this time about distance, angles, lines of sight. Followed by a long pause, then the question he knew was coming: "But what about you?"

"Don't worry, Probie. We'll meet you outside."

"But -"

"Good luck," Ziva said. She didn't even try to mangle a colloquialism; she must have guessed exactly how seriously screwed he was.

"You too," he managed. He knew they were on the move when he heard the sound of gunfire suddenly intensify on the other side of the warehouse.

As distractions went he figured it was the best he was likely to get. He steeled himself to cross the gap to Gibbs -- if all went well he'd get a weapon, ammunition, and an agent; if it didn't, they'd both be dead.

No pressure.

Tony holstered his gun and tried to ignore the blood roaring in his ears, which kept getting louder and louder and louder, until he realized it wasn't in his head at all. It sounded like -- was it a fighter jet? Was the _Air Force_ here?

Crates and boxes vibrated out of balance and crashed to the floor all around him. The shooting had stopped, and Tony knew that _this, now, right now_ was the best distraction he would ever get, so he scrambled over to Gibbs.

Still breathing. Thank god, still breathing.

Tony wrestled off Gibbs' protective vest carefully and tugged his jacket and shirt out of the way until he could see that the shot, though lucky, was a through-and-through. No hits to anything major, nowhere near any arteries or organs. He choked back a laugh -- he was never going to let Gibbs live down getting shot in the armpit. There were some nasty splinters in his arm and a lump on his head from being knocked out when he hit the floor, but nothing critical.

Gibbs would recover, but he was still out. Tony still had to get them both out of there alive.

Tony had just pulled the first aid field kit from his jacket when something incredibly heavy landed behind him. He twisted around so fast that he almost fell over. The concrete floor had shattered, cracks spiderwebbing outward from the big metal feet at the center of the damage. Big metal feet attached to big metal legs and a big metal torso with a big glowing blue circle in it and, holy crap, that was a big metal head staring at him from atop a big metal body. It was a red and gold suit of armour or something, and Tony had a brief moment to think _what the fuck have we gotten ourselves into?_ and _more importantly, where the fuck is Gibbs' gun?_ before the suit turned away from him and walked out into the hot zone.

And that was when the shooting and screaming and crunching started.

He ignored the way his hands were shaking as he applied bandages to Gibbs' wounds and shoved him back into his bloody vest. He also pretended he wasn't worried that he hadn't heard any chatter from Ziva and McGee about the giant metal suit taking out all the weapons dealers/drug smugglers/kidnappers/murderers (these guys were impressively multi-talented), because silence could only mean two things: either they had gotten out of the warehouse and had no idea what was going on, or they were dead. Tony couldn't think about which was more likely. Not right now.

And then the shooting and screaming and crunching _stopped_. Ominous hydraulic footsteps were coming closer and Tony had no escape route and no plan.

He finally spotted Gibbs' gun a few feet away, half-hidden in the shadows where it must have bounced after it was dropped. He snatched it up and prayed that it wasn't jammed or broken, because he didn't have time to check it. The metal suit came around the corner, but stopped when Tony raised the gun with the steadiest grip he could manage.

"Is that really necessary?" the suit asked. It had a freaky electronic voice.

"Would it even do any good?" Tony asked back. The suit was covered in dents and scorch marks, but it all looked like surface damage. He knew there had been at least one gun with armor-piercing rounds in that arsenal, so he was thinking he knew the answer already.

"Not in the least," the suit confirmed, and when Tony didn't lower the gun the suit crossed its arms. "Fine, we'll play it your way, NCIS."

Tony felt like clapping a protective hand over the acronym emblazoned on his jacket, but it was obviously already too late. And childish -- but really, when had that ever stopped him before?

"Look," he said, "I really appreciate you showing up and distracting these guys long enough for me to get to my boss here and for my friends to hopefully have escaped -"

"Oh, right," the suit said, and suddenly there was an explosion of noise in his ear, a cacophony of voices all trying to be heard at the same time, barking orders and demanding updates and, gloriously, one that said, "...and Tony, if you don't answer me _right now_ McGee and I are going to...", but it was all so loud that Tony scrambled to rip his earpiece out.

"I had to temporarily disrupt your communications," the suit explained. "Sorry."

Tony got the impression the suit wasn't really sorry at all.

"I suppose you're going to stick us with the clean up," Tony snarked. "Gee, I hope we have enough body bags for all those people you've killed."

"Well, they might not _all_ be dead," the suit replied, thoughtfully.

"You know, there are these things called 'courts' and 'jails' and 'the justice system' that one generally employs in these types of situations -"

"But this," the suit interrupted, "sends a much clearer message, doesn't it?"

Tony couldn't disagree with that, but it's just not how things were done. There were rules against this sort of thing; probably Gibbs had one for this exact situation. Maybe something like 'Rule #33: When NCIS blunders into a huge weapons cache and must be rescued by an armoured super-hero who kills all the perpetrators in a spectacularly impressive fashion, do not, under any circumstances, attempt to arrest him.'

It's too bad Tony had less sense than bravado.

"Yeah, look, Mister..."

"Iron Man."

Tony paused. "What, seriously? 'Iron Man'? That's your name?" The suit didn't answer, just stared.

"Okay." Tony blew out a breath. "Okay, Iron Man, you just murdered a whole bunch of people back there, and while I appreciate my own continued existence, I'm really going to have to bring you in."

Iron Man laughed, which sounded like an engine trying to turn over. "Are you fucking _kidding me?_"

"Um. No. You just broke the law, probably a whole _bunch_ of laws, and it's my job to -"

Tony didn't finish the sentence. He couldn't, really, not when Iron Man used his metal hand to grab Tony by one shoulder, lifting him like he was nothing, and slam him up against a concrete wall. Hurt like hell, and it knocked the wind out of him, but he was still conscious, so he figured it could have been worse.

"Look, if NCIS is here, that must mean one of yours is involved, right?"

Chief Petty Officer Danny Godfried, husband, father of two. A guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, he was killed during a botched bank robbery -- weapons supplied by this very warehouse.

"Murdered," Tony rasped out.

"Fitting justice, then," Iron Man concluded, and wow, those glowing eyes and electronic voice were way creepier up close and personal.

They stared at each other for a long moment. Tony wondered what would happen if he tried to take off Iron Man's helmet, if that would get him killed or not, and whether it would be worth it to try, when Iron Man added, "You know you can't stop me from flying out of here. You shouldn't even try."

"Flying?" Tony asked, thrown off track and bewildered. "What?"

Iron Man let him go and Tony slid down the wall to land hard on his feet. He watched warily as Iron Man took a few steps back and clicked his heels together. A tiny, mostly hysterical part of his mind made allusions to The Wizard of Oz and Judy Garland that were entirely situationally inappropriate; then everything started vibrating again. Smoke started blowing out from under Iron Man's feet and palms, followed by blue-hot fire, and then Iron Man had vertical take-off. Holy shit.

"What the hell?" Gibbs said, and oh, sure, he wakes up _for this_, and the next thing Tony knew Iron Man was saluting them and flying out a propped-open window near the roof.

Seriously: Holy. Shit.

"Tony!" Ziva was running into the warehouse, trying to push her way through the swarming and much-belated SWAT unit with McGee and a gurney-toting medic in tow. McGee was looking around wide-eyed and pale-faced; Tony didn't blame him, and he hadn't even taken a look yet himself.

"Help me up," Gibbs demanded from the floor. Tony knew that was a bad idea and ran a hand through his hair with a sigh, trying to figure out how to say 'no' and preserve his dignity through the rebuttal, before just giving up. "Sure thing, Boss," he said, and managed to get Gibbs standing with only a minimal amount of cursing.

Gibbs leaned heavily on Tony, who was a bit jelly-legged himself and staggered them both over to the nearest Stark Industries crate that looked sturdy enough to prop them both up. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"I've been _shot_, DiNozzo," Gibbs replied, glaring.

"Yeah, but other than that, how are you -" With his good arm, Gibbs smacked him in the head. "Ow, okay! Nevermind!"

"First you're going to take me to the hospital," Gibbs ordered, "and then you're going to explain to me why I have a warehouse full of munitions and no one to interrogate."

Tony contemplated the hell he was about to be put through until Gibbs quietly added, "What was that thing, Tony?"

"I don't know," Tony said, and Gibbs glanced sharply at him. "But he showed up just in time."

Gibbs grunted, either in agreement or pain Tony wasn't sure, which was probably the point.

"We'll talk about this later," Gibbs said, "when we discuss rule number eleven."

"Rule number eleven, Boss?" It _couldn't_ be...could it?

Ziva and McGee arrived then with the medic, who urged Gibbs onto the gurney. "Yes," Gibbs grunted as the medic poked at him. "'Never, under any circumstances, let Gibbs get shot'. You broke it, Tony. And it's one of my favourites."

"Oh yeah, that one," Tony replied lightly. "Well, you know what they say."

"Rules are meant to be destroyed," Ziva finished. She grinned at him, and he stared back.

"It's 'broken', Ziva," Tony corrected. "'Rules are meant to be _broken_'."

"That's what I said!" she argued, and looked to McGee for support, who just shook his head.

"Oh, whatever," she replied, and Tony laughed, then laughed some more, then laughed manically all the way back to the truck, where Ziva liberated him of the keys and a grim-faced McGee man-handled him into the back.

Tony gladly took the sedative McGee had gotten for him from the medic, and as they followed behind the ambulance and the gentle rocking motions of the drive put Tony to sleep, he dreamt of shooting a man who bled red and gold.


End file.
